Social Media and Politics Folgen

Dr. Sebastian Valenzuela, Associate Professor of Communication at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, guests to discuss two studies on how social media impact political participation.The first study demonstrates how both Facebook and Twitter contribute to protest participation, but they do so through different pathways that relate to strong and weak tie social networks.The second study is a meta-analysis of existing research, and it explores whether exposure to cross-cutting information affects political participation. Both studies are published in Political Communication, and you can read them here:1) Ties, Likes, and Tweets: Using Strong and Weak Ties to Explain Differences in Protest Participation Across Facebook and Twitter Use2) A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Cross-Cutting Exposure on Political Participation

Chris Dick, Director of Applied Data Science at Civis Analytics, guests to discuss how data science approaches are being used to increase participation in the 2020 US Census.We talk about some of the political and financial challenges facing the census, what types of data are being used models of hard-to-count communities, and how different types of messaging can either increase or decrease Census response rates.Learn more about the Civis Census Intelligence Center here!

Neal Rothschild, Associate Director of Growth at Axios, guests to discuss the Axios-NewsWhip 2020 Attention Tracker. The attention tracker monitors candidate and issue mentions across Facebook and Twitter, and we talk about how the technology is used in Axios's reporting of the 2020 Democratic Primaries.